Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question. Front and centre, one of my responsibilities over the course of the last year has been cleaning up the mess that has been left by the single worst government on national security in our country's history. We inherited a capability gap with our submarines as the former coalition government were in and out of a deal with Japan, in and out of a deal with France—giving rise to a decade of indecision. We inherited 28 different programs running a combined 97 years over time. What we've now learnt is that in their last five years, the former government effectively engaged in $20 billion worth of cuts to the Defence budget, including taking billions of dollars secretly from the defence budget in a single strategic reserve adjustment alone.

The Leader of the Opposition was the last defence minister in that government but, to be fair, it was not all his fault because what preceded him was a revolving door of defence ministers: Johnston, Kevin Andrews, Senator Payne, Pyne, Senator Reynolds. It's hard to remember them all! But what is really clear about that revolving door is that the former government regarded the defence portfolio as a trophy, and they saw the Defence Force as an opportunity simply to raise money for the Liberal Party.

The Liberals believe that they had a brand advantage—

See this speech in context